I seriously don't know if many people remember this one. I need to set this one up historically.
Champions was still in the multiple softcover books, pre 3rd Edition as I remember (I could be wrong, my Champions knowledge that far back is sketchy). So this was the superhero game of the time.
Car Wars was still the three plastic pocket boxes of Car Wars, Sunday Drivers, and Truck Stop. Deluxe Car Wars has not been released.
Abd the year was 1983. Thriller. The US invasion of Grenada. SDI. Return of the Jedi. McNuggets. Minivans. The release of the Famicom/NES in Japan (US was 1985). The last big year for the Atari 2600.
So the two companies making Champions and Car Wars get together and produce a book that does three things:
- Add Car Wars to Champions
- Add Helicopter Rules to Car Wars
- Add Superpowers to Car Wars
I know...what do helicopters have to do with this? I guess if superheroes fly, then Car Wars needs to fly. Let us break down each rules section and how it worked, and how we used it in our games. Strap yourself in.
Champions: Car Wars
This section created rules for Car Wars cars and combat inside the Champions game. All the movement was done on hex grids, the damage scales adjusted, and the weapon stats converted over to the Champions scale. This was our first look at Hero system, and a lot of this was so alien and strange to us we ignored it until we started playing Champions years later.
One notable change from Car Wars in this section was the use of non-ablative armor on the cars, versus Car Wars' ablative armor. This concept would later show up in the Car Wars supplement Deathtrack as the metal armor rules.
These rules were surprisingly Max Max meets 007, and I could see a lot of Champions players scream with delight at being able to finally have armed and armored cars in their games. This must have been a huge thing for Champions players at the time, I mean, those still not playing Car Wars all weekend at the hobby store. Everyone played Car Wars in our neighborhood. We played D&D and the number one question during the game was, "When are we playing Car Wars?"
Car Wars: Helicopters
This section introduced totally broken helicopters into Car Wars, and these were later cleaned up in Deluxe Car Wars. The weight allowances on these flying beasts was so high you could stack hundreds of points of armor on them, and your only option for fighting these flying takes was to shoot the flimsy rotors off and watch the armored flying safes fall to the ground, take hundreds of points of damage in a collision with the ground, and watch the passengers crawl out unscathed because the damage from plummeting thousands of feet from the sky did not penetrate the insides.
We never really designed out choppers that way. We could, but they weren't fun. We stuck to faster, lighter armored and armed choppers that mirrored car designs - which we in fact a lot more deadly because of their acceleration and mobility on the battlefield. A chopper that can fly and has double or triple the acceleration of a ground vehicle gives you a whole lot more options when fighting in an urban environment. I am just going to hover low over this tall building where you can't see me, wait until you take a course of action, and circle around to your weak spot at my leisure.
Very few arena cars had decent top armor when this came out, and even fewer could shoot straight up (or a map with a slant range long enough) so it made chopper versus car battles like turkey shoots unless you custom designed cars to fight choppers.
Still, we thought these rules enough were cool to use in our games, and we had a lot of fun with these massive sky behemoths. When Deluxe Car Wars came out, our massive week-long 100 car arena and helicopter battles were all but over, so we never really got to enjoy the revised helicopter rules in DCW.
Car Wars: Superpowers
Now I owe an article on this one, but we used the original Traveller RPG as our rules for our Car Wars RPG. The skill ratings were extremely similar. Both systems were 2d6 roll-high. The format for characters means we could quickly roll them up, spend the 30 starting skill points in Car Wars, and have a character quick - or hundreds of them.
This superpowers system in Autoduel Champions was our superpower system for years, at least until Marvel Super Heroes came out. This worked very well, scaled nicely with the Car Wars rules, and gave us these cool Traveller superpowers that worked very well with our houseruled system. You could rate various superheroes easily, give them armor that defended against the types of weapons they could buy flight, energy blasts, super speed, running, stretchy limbs, and other powers with a quick and easy system that fit well within our Car Wars and Traveller framework.
When Marvel Super Heroes came along, Car Wars and Traveller fell by the wayside, and the superheroes (sadly) took over our games. At least in Car Wars with superheroes, there are equalizers against the massive powers of superheroes and villains. Your combat car could even the odds, and the average person could fight a superhero. Heck, they could be a superhero with a car like that and great skills.
The End of an Era
And then that era was over as the Marvel and DC pen-and-paper games came in, blew out the power level of our games with cosmic energies, and all of a sudden the average person was a nobody again.
There was no great equalizer.
Superheroes were again, the "chosen ones."
Of all the things I don't like about the modern superhero movie and myth, it is this denial of the power of the average person in comparison to the hero on the screen. We wait for superheroes and strong figures to come and save us from ourselves. Back when I went to college, we were taught the power of collective action. If a manufacturer was selling weapons to oppressive regimes, and this company also made consumer goods - like refrigerators - than our community agreed to not buy those consumer goods. We recycled because we knew if millions of us did, it would make an impact. We divested in countries with horrible human rights abuses. If enough of us did together and all as one, we would make a difference.
We were all superheroes back then.
Today, I feel we have been trained well by Hollywood to simply wait for the next savior. Let's not individually make a difference in anything, we can just have some "figurehead leader" do it for us. If someone is worried about carbon footprint, for example, do they shop that way? Do they demand Amazon give them information on a product's carbon footprint and shop for lower alternatives? Do they live that way and make informed choices? Do they make a small difference in their lives and urge others to do the same?
Nah, let's just wait for someone or some slogan that makes us feel good about ourselves. Even if the plan does not work or the person will never accomplish the goal let's fight for it like it is the end of the world. The superhero. In essence, I feel the superhero myth has become mass-market collectivism, a false corporatized feeling of doing good sold to us like junk food. You see this in the Marvel and DC movies, those heroes never inspire the people of those worlds to help save themselves, nor could the people of those worlds ever hope to.
Champions Allows Talented Normals
This is likely due to Champions allowing normal people some chance against superheroes. There is this model in the Hero System where everyone uses the same character generation rules, so theoretically a highly-trained super agent could equal the power of a superhero. They wouldn't have all the damage resistances, powers, and immunities - but at least those points could be put to work in some way that could best a hero's powers with skills, abilities, and training.
And Autoduel Champions leveled the playing field further. Combat cars out of Car Wars could help even the odds against those with extraordinary powers. With the Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes games, I get the feeling normal people and even highly trained agents are still inferior to heroes with powers. This power level only seems to get worse as time goes on and the superheroes get stronger and stronger.
There is an article waiting here, as in Champions feels more grounded in power level, character design, and scope. This game also does not have the power of brand names, so your heroes are the most important in the world instead of the trademarked ones.
Blinded by the Marquee Lights
Looking back and seeing the organic system we came up with, and how equal that made each side, versus the later official games, makes me wonder if we didn't make a mistake in abandoning what we had back then. Both the Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes games felt like they intentionally weakened the balance between the average person and superheroes. If you played an average person, or even your own creation, you were a nobody compared to Batman or Wolverine.
And our Car Wars superhero game became more of a super-heroic soap opera past that point as we switched to those systems, and the grim and gritty life on the street, and the average person along with it, faded from importance. The balance was gone. There was no equal to these modern gods.
And after that we gave up on our characters and played with the copyrighted IP characters of Marvel and DC. The superheroes each year only got more and more powerful, both in powers and in our imaginations. Like a Lovecraftian monster, our humanity and ability to affect change was crushed by the people in the spandex tights.
Looking back at this game, as broken and as of an era as it was, makes me wonder what we lost when we fell in love with the hype. I get this feeling our game, our campaign, and the world in a larger sense.
Some interesting feelings today for a book very few likely remember.
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